Peasant Woman

The problem, of course, is trying to kick-start a blog after many months of neglect. Where do you start? Do you start by commenting on the huge amount of spam you've been getting? Or maybe start up with the lighter (and more humanitarian) story of how the blog actually put you in touch with a childhood friend you hadn't seen in over 20 years.

A few months back, I got an email from a family friend who contacted me after he'd chanced across this tiny little blog. How's that for serendipity? (I suppose serendipity has another name these days, with the all-out accessibility the web provides, but hey....) It was really great to hear from this family friend/cousin-in-waiting--and somewhat sad to know that so many years had gone by with us not being in touch.

It's always those years-going-by that kills me in the end, I have to admit. I'm a Serb after all, a member of one of the most stuck-in-the-past peoples who still inhabit the earth, and as much as I'd like to say that I can leave the past in the past, hey, who am I kidding? I can do it about 85% of the time, and the rest of the time, I'm toast. This despite the fact that having a kid has catapulted me pretty damn firmly into the here-and-now, where, as most of us know, life happens to be a-happening. But every once in a while, don't you wish you could turn back the clock so that you could go back and fix a few things (otherwise known as major life mistakes, ha). On that melancholy note, it's nice to be back!

Yikes, I can't believe it's been so long since I posted anything! Apologies. I've been recuperating from a terrible haircut, cut so short that I was looking (and even acting) like a cancer victim for a while.

Now that it's grown out a bit, it's much more malleable. On a bad day, I look like the Incredible Hulk. Or a 13-year-old boy. Maybe even a punk rocker, if I'm lucky. On a good day, my husband tells me, I look like Mia Farrow when she was younger. Ha. As if! He must mean a Balkan Mia Farrow.

You can definitely tell Mali Zub's got some Balkan DNA by the way he eats bread. Loves it, can't get enough! Which is how you can tell he's got Serbian blood coursing though his veins, for the Serbs eat bread like it's going out of style: bread with breakfast, bread with lunch, bread with bread. Whatever the occasion, it's not a meal if it's not served with bread.

Bread is to the Serbs like rice to the ____ (fill in the blank).

Japanese. Which just happens to make up the other half of Mali Zub's ethnic heritage, as evidenced by his copious eating of rice. Zubs loooooves rice (although maybe possibly he might just love bread a little bit better).

Just as long as he's got a starch in front of him, I guess. Which makes me wonder: is there an ethnic group out there that doesn't have some form of starch as a dietary mainstay? My Mexican friend eats tortillas like they're going out of style, and the stereotype of the Irish potato... well, you know that one. But what about others?

I was out to dinner at a local Italian restaurant when a familiar-looking couple walked in the door. "That looks like my accountant," I said, delving into a load of bread.

"You're kidding," my friend B. said. "Those people? I hear they're the best sex therapists in Boulder."

I swiveled around to get another look. "Well, that's definitely my accountant and his wife," I said. "But sex therapists. Are you sure?"

She nodded.

"Shit," I said. "Nobody tells me anything."

When I got home, I relayed this information to Kimo, who, like B., already knew about the apparently-not-so-secret double lives of our accountant and his wife. I guess I was the only one who was taking things at face value, putting stock into those tiny little type-written titles that appear on business cards.

But it got me thinking: how many of us lead secret or not-so-secret double lives? And is it just an American thing, or is it a world-wide phenomenon?

After a relaxing (and unplugged) week in Kauai, Kimo, Mali Zub and I were at the Lihue airport Sunday night when we learned our flight back was canceled due to technical difficulties.

Well, as you might guess, that didn't exactly please a lot of people. All the passengers, most of whom were cranky from waiting, tired from the late hour (11:30 p.m.) and sand-covered (because they'd been kicked out of their hotel long ago), began to short-circuit. Meanwhile, one lone airline representative battled her way through the increasingly irate crowd to announce that shuttles would soon be arriving to take us to a hotel, and, by the way, here's the number to call so that you can rebook your flight and hopefully get out tomorrow.

Mayhem. People began rushing the representative while she shouted for us to settle down, Please let the families with children through first! I picked up Mali Zubs and got to my feet while people pushed from behind, jockeying for space.

"Hurry!" a young woman to my left yelled at her husband. "Get up there, get to the front of the damn line!"

Similar rally cries surrounded us while Kimo, Mali Zub and I struggled to pack up all the baby toys that had been keeping Zubs at bay for the past hour. A young woman rushed past us with a baby stroller, her two-year-old daughter startled into a high-pitched sob from all the action.

"Families with children first!" the rep yelled, over and over. Somehow, it didn't really seem to make any difference: we were surrounded by singles and couples demanding, Goddammit, to be the first ones served.

I was so shocked by the anger and vicissitude around me that I just stood and watched while Kimo waited our families-with-children-turn. People who minutes before had been quietly reading or napping or staring off into space were now yelling, red-faced, at anyone they could find.

"She said families with children first," boomed a voice behind me.

"This is my child," a woman said.

"What! He must be at least 24!"

And on and on it went. One boisterous young woman and her husband (who were duking it out with the airlines via matching iPod phones) continued complaining at the top of their voices until the ticketing agent couldn't take it anymore and finally gave in. Never mind that the elderly passengers, who were next in line for the shuttle, continued to wait patiently while the youngest children screamed and cried out of exhaustion and fear.

And all the while, I couldn't help but think how horrible it was to see so many adults acting this way. Never mind that we were in Kauai--gorgeous, relaxing Kauai of all places--where food and lodging were just a shuttle ride away. The way people were acting, you'd have thought we were stuck in the desert or some Survivor-type island where there wasn't enough food or water to go around. Instead, we'd been given an extra day of vacation, put up in a gorgeous $380-a-night hotel, and given a $40/day food reimbursement.

In the middle of all this craziness, two separate families asked if we needed any help, since we were traveling with a baby. The kindness of those two gestures have stayed with me these past few days, past another red-eye and into the jet-lagged haze of adjusting to post-vacation life. Still, it's frightening to realize how quickly our society could break down if something were really wrong. All the social norms as we know it, out the window.

So here we are, madly packing, getting ready for vacation. Which is quite the production now that we're traveling with a crawling and wanting-to-walk Mali Zub. It's amazing how much stuff we have for the little bugger. Let's just say that Kimo and I are sharing one suitcase while Mali Zub (and all his gear) gets the other. Yikes.

My mother, The Original Peasant Woman, who's watching Zubs while we pack, is slightly horrified. Very Un-Peasant-Like behavior, how much stuff we're schlepping along. Especially since we're not even traveling with a serious Peasant Provisions bag, which usually includes a chicken, a loaf of bread, salami and whatever other stinky foodstuffs you can cram into your bag. The smeller, the better, I've found, since it usually helps keep your neighboring seat mates from inching into your space.

One of my favorite things about Peasant Life are all the contradictions that accompany it. Like the reaction I got from my Old World Peasant Relatives when I made the mistake of showing up in shorts for a visit. The looks (and comments I got from aunties kind enough to pull me aside) were enough to make your toes curl up in disdain. Apparently visits from young-to-middle-aged women in their childbearing years should be done properly, with said women all wrapped up in skirts and heels and other citified accoutrements.

Like hair dye. Preferably, in our Balkan corner of the world, a deep, dark red (left over from Communism, I guess). And here's where I made my second and even more serious mistake: in addition to not dyeing my increasingly gray hair, I'd forgotten to wear makeup. (I know! You wouldn't thought I was back home, in one of the college towns where I always seem to be living. Ack.) And it was a major mistake at that -- a personal affront to the Gods that be -- in this case, the Grand Peasant Lineage that Makes Up My Family (hereafter known as The Peasants That Be).

So I'm working on making it up to them. Painting and anti-graying and picturing the looks on their Anti-Peasant faces when I make my next Balkan appearance, all spiffed up and gentrified. Well, maybe. It's kind of hard to look glamorous when you've got baby food stuck in your hair. Although I hear avocados are wonderfully detoxifying....

I don't know how our Peasant Ancestors did it without air conditioning. It's 97 today, and even the dog (who's got a pretty swank life, to be sure) is refusing to go outside. OK, so he's a long-hair golden/something mix, but really. Too hot for a dog?

And what about the little kiddies? After trying to eat lunch out on the patio of a local restaurant yesterday, you should have seen poor Mali Zubs, all miserable and magenta-cheeked until we finally gave up and moved to a table inside. By that time, he was already good and heat-rashed, the poor little bugger.

Which made me wonder about all those little Peasant Children from yesteryear, and how they did it. I mean, it's not like their parents were able to pack them in ice or anything to lessen their pain. (Not like a lot of my relatives have ice boxes, or anything. Then again, they don't really have many teeth, either.)

At any rate, I can't help but think of the Wicked Witch of the West on a day like today, especially that great scene from The Wizard of Oz where she melts before our very eyes.

"I'm melting...."

On March 16, I wrote about a new Italian restaurant called Raddha, and how much Kimo and I really liked it. I ended that post/restaurant review with the following words:

"I think I've finally found a restaurant Peasant Woman will like! That's right--we're taking her back to see if Radda passes the Peasant Test.

"Which is a tough test, let me tell you. Because our beloved Peasant Woman [The Original Peasant Woman] can be pi-i-cky. And who can blame her? After growing up on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic, she's got some good food ju-ju, which means that she can spot a mean proscuitto with the best of them. And you do not want to be on the receiving end of Peasant Woman's scorn (which is so legendary in itself that it probably deserves another entry.) Listen up, Radda, you might be making the local scene, but will it mean much if you don't get the Peasant Woman stamp of approval?"

Three months later, our moment has finally arrived. Mali Zub and I took The Original Peasant Woman to Radda for lunch the other day, and what do you think happened?

She liked it. I'm not quite sure how to stress the gravity of those three words, especially for those of you who've not yet met My Mother The Original Peasant Woman. Let me just say that this is a good-cook/everything-made-from-scratch kind of woman who prefers her own cooking to most restaurants. Always looking for fresh flavors and the simple yet hardy fare that comprises the Peasant Reality--something that all those fusion restaurants just don't quite get. The shocking news is that The Original Peasant Woman loved Radda. Couldn't get enough. Wants to go back again and again so she can sample the latest, greatest dishes. So put that in your pipe and smoke it next time you're in the area, looking for a good place to stop and rest up over some prosciutto and Slovene wine.

You know you're pretty far-removed from your Peasant Lineage when you're thinking about taking your kid to a farm as a field trip. That's right. I'm almost embarrassed to say it, but we're taking Mali Zub, The Third Generation, to a strawberry-picking festival this weekend at a local farm that we, gasp, have absolutely no connection to.

Well, that's not exactly right. It's a farm that we joined for the summer in order to get fresh fruits and vegetables. Community supported agriculture, for youse citified folks out there who are looking to do something similar.

Pretty crazy, when you consider that a generation ago, my poor parents were out in similar fields, good days or bad, tending and harvesting the fields so they'd have something to eat. And here we are, white-collar workers who're too busy to even plant vegetable gardens in our backyards. (Well, we used to, but a rather large family of garter snakes seems to have taken over back there....)

Makes you feel kind of guilty, doesn't it? And I'm not even a Catholic, I swear. Although I must have been one in a past life.